One of the Crowd

We're all in a fuckin sci-fi show here and I ain't the hero. One thing the pandemic's shown me is that I'm not Tom Cruise with the cure who'll kill his way to the top, through a bunch of bad guys, and take out a global conspiracy to save the whole planet.

Nope. I'm one of the crowd. In the scene in the movie where the ferry's jammed with cars and swarms of people and it's pulling away from the dock and people are falling into the water, I'm way at the back, not even on the dock but way back on the road. My tall skinny ass is stuck in a crush, about to be wiped out by the oncoming aliens.

It's weird though cause I'm one of the crowd but I'm also the hero. I'm on my own hero's journey here. I'm not the center of the world but the center of a world.

As one of the crowd, I move along as directed. I have no control over my actions. I'm a cog in a piece of a part of a machine in a shed in a shop out on the coast somewhere. I ain't disconnected or even disconnectable from the surrounding system. I'm integrated like a motherfucker. I'm a cell in a tissue in an organ in a body. I am a leaf on a tree.

There's no difference between me, my culture, and my society. I think its thoughts. I speak its words. And there I was thinking I was the Marlboro Man, sitting atop my steed at a safe distance, surveilling the scene with wise, silent eyes.

The truth is I'm not independent in mind, body, or soul.

The Difference Between Mother Nature and Me

I got too comfy and let my guard down.

What happens when a zebra lets its guard down?

Chomp.

I am not separate from Mother Earth. Even though I try my hardest: walking on concrete, only touching plastic, metal and glass. I am unnatural, and I live in an unnatural world.

Fuck Mother Nature. She's a pain in my ass. She's the ants in my kitchen. She's my lawn that needs mowing. She's the rain on my windshield when I'm driving to work. She's always in my way, slowing me down.

And I wonder why I'm in prison.

Mother Nature lets me do whatever I want. She's the best kind of teacher, letting me figure out shit for myself. If it gets too much and I get tired and crabby, she holds me and sings me to sleep.

Mother Nature didn't go away because I concreted her over. She is the air I breathe, the bacteria on my hands, the flora and fauna prancing around in my gut. The distance between me and Mother Nature is a half a fraction of a millisecond of a micron, not even.

Because I am Mother Nature and Mother Nature is me.

What I Want (or The Kids Fucked Up)

I want to be able to go outside whenever I want. But we've all been a bunch of dicks and now we're locked up for three to six months.

We've gotten so nasty, so fuckin dirty, so dependent on fragile systems that one tiny bat-shaped mistake got us all breathing poison over each other.

Now we're on the Naughty Step. A whole species forced to wash their hands for six months and think about what we did wrong.

Sutpidhead, I keep telling myself as I stand at my kitchen sink, looking out the window at a silent street.

The kids fucked up. Now we're all grounded. What's the best thing to do? Stamp around red-faced for a while and let off some steam then carry on exactly as before? Do we keep doing the same shit that got us here in the first place? Fuck yeah. Let's learn nothing. Let's crouch in the dust and keep torturing insects and mammals unfortunate enough to scuttle near our hunting, gathering fingers.

Or we can grow the fuck up. We can sit on the edge of our bed with our chin in our hands and stare into the distance and try to do what we're actually supposed to be doing which is think about what we did wrong in the first place.

So let's think about it. I don't know what you've done, rightly or wrongly, so I'll rephrase the question: What did I do wrong?

I'm not sure but my gut instinct is this: I got totally obsessed with a screen. I became so preoccupied with my screens that I let personal relationships suffer. I made the mistake of thinking people on screens were more important than their real-life selves, or, in fact, the real-life people right next to me. I ignored all my neighbors. I can't name a single one. I don't live close to any of my friends or family. I have to get on a plane to see my brother.

My relationship with products has also changed since getting hooked on the Screen. Now I assume buying something means looking it up on Amazon then it shows up at my door in a couple days.

Wrong. That product is an unbroken chain of people stretching halfway around the world. I was happy to ignore the people working in the shadows. Why did I allow my soul to harden? Everyone else was doing it. (Some people called out the bullshit – they've either got dreadlocks or shaved heads though.) Enough people like me were doing it that it felt normal to me.

Then a coronavirus-shaped baseball comes outta left field and knocks us the fuck out.

And so I sit on the edge of my imaginary bed and my little heart sinks because I know, deep down, that the voices in my head are right. I fucked up.

Fiction Makes You Better

Reading fiction makes you a better person.

You can measure it. The exact size of the book, that's how much you're better.

Every single page has worth. Some are more worthy than others, but none will leave you worse by the end.

It's hard, though, to read fiction and it's not encouraged.

Why read when you can stream/watch/play/scroll/message/shit/die/leave...

But there's a book out there with your name on it.

Every single person on the planet has a book that will change their fuckin life and turn them into lifelong readers.

Hardcore, seasoned readers can tell you straight away what their book was, the one that started their addiction.

Find that first hit and you'll ride a wave for the rest of your life, learning and developing your empathy to higher and higher levels you never coulda imagined.

Fiction helps you see the world through someone else's eyes. You're given a world, most of the time it's coherent with characters doing and saying rational things. Sometimes you're just watching what's happening like a movie. Other times you're in someone's head listening to their thoughts.

This means you can see what it's like to be anyone. Every type of person you can think of has written a book. There's no category not covered.

Even if that's not your intention or purpose, you'll stumble across different ways of seeing the world that make sense. It helps you see that your way of seeing the world is only one way of seeing the world.

It drives up your empathy and at the same time it develops your imagination.

People like you if you're empathetic and imaginative. Not because you do anything douchey, but because you treat them like a person.

They're hard skills to learn. Maybe because they're hard to teach. They're no right angles. They're abstract as fuck.

But that's what fiction's for. That's exactly what it's designed to do, to strengthen your imagination and your empathy.

Fiction makes you a better, kinder person, plus it helps you get all the shit you want. Win win muthafucka.

Heroes Make Us Who We Are

When I was a kid, I wanted to be James Bond so bad.

I had a card in my wallet that was a License to Kill. I pretended to be him every day in my summer vacation. When a new movie came out, I'd chew the seatbelt for the hour-long drive from our house in Bragg Creek to the Famous Players at West Hills Mall.

In grade 1, at our Dress-Like-The-Job-You-Wanna-Do-One-Day Day, I didn't wear a costume. Instead, I just told people I was gonna be a spy. Douche bag? Sure. But I was a dedicated douche bag.

I loved that dude and, in my six-year-old mind, I was gonna be him when I grew up.

Then I grew up. Along with my years, my childish naivety wore off. Being a spy wasn't a real thing. At least, being James Bond wasn't.

I coulda tried to become Pierce Brosnan, but I was never that into acting.

So away went the dream of being a spy. Eventually, I decided on becoming a doctor. That went out the window too, but that's a different story.

But who the hell knows what that did to my little-kid brain. How did James Bond affect my outlook on life?

Am I braver, stronger, smarter, and funnier?

Or am I more misogynistic, racist, arrogant, and dickheadish?

Think back to your hardcore heroes as a kid. It's easy to remember, they're the ones you wanted to be so bad it hurt.

Then think about how they made you who you are.

It's ain't so easy, but you'll start to see that a lotta them is you.

Words Set You Free

Learn the Word and you'll learn to harness the power of the world. Treat the word lightly and your reins will be made of paper, your bits of brittle clay. At the slightest tug, your ideas fall apart and you stand there, garbling like a baby.

Treat words with respect. They kill the irreverent every day. Thousands of people, many naive, many more arrogant, misuse, abuse, and confuse their words so their meaning's misheard or mistaken. Soon their head's on a spike beside a thousand other cunts who opened their mouths without thinking.

The Wonderful World of the Internet has given us a whole new way to wield our words. Like kids with new toys, we're smashing the shit outta things. There are no rules so we gotta make em up as we go. Words are the light revealing the darkness, revealing what can kill us or save us.

The best way to get yourself into a comfortable relationship with words is to read like a motherfucker. Read everything you can and sprinkle in a hefty dose of what other people call Good Books. If you don't like something, move on. But first, ask yourself if it's cause you're too dumb. You can always come back when you're a little less of a moron.

The power is in your hands. Master the word and you master the world.

What is Electric Sheep?

You.

Me.

All of us.

The data swarming inside our heads. The electrical impulses firing across your synaptic gap right now, now, and now.

The electric sheep is the dream of an android in the mind of a writer on a planet called Earth.

The electric sheep is the tweet, pic, and post of eight billion people eight trillion times every day.

The electric sheep is the idea sparking off that will never be read, heard, nor seen.

The electric sheep watches you while you sleep and while you wake.

The electric sheep has been here forever and will be here for always. It was here before we oozed from the mud and will outlive our ash on the wind.

The electric sheep is here to make you feel better.

The electric sheep, my friend, is love.